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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

NAB thoughts

the purely theoretical idea of a digital signal does not degrade, but how many functioning 100 year old hard drives have you handled?

hard drives are expendables. until that changes you arguably have more work maintaining an archive of a all the full resolution data than you would an OCN - even with LTO in mind (since the machines are constantly changing and formats go out of style).

The only way to keep data safe right now is to keep it moving, to multiple places. It will be very nice when there is a more stable alternative to all this crap that's out there.

That said, if you're worried you can go DPX, which doesn't rely on a single company, and choke on the uncompressed frames :)

----

Also, I won't shoot stills digitally (once you use an XPan, you can't go back. it's like good tea. once you have it you can't drink lipton).. and I'm 100% geek, so you would assume I'd be all over D200s etc. I view the red as an alternative to 35mm production which also happens to be much cheaper (especially in post), but I don't view it as a _replacement_. I do think that over the next decade (not the next "few years") we will see 35 production slowly ramp down, and 2k/4k production ramp up. I think that will be driven by economics, not art. I don't think the issue of digital projection will be solved until the studios and the theatre chains make a cost sharing deal for the upgrade. We'll see..

_a
 
jamesedwelland said:
tonaci said:
In terms of long life archiving.. film degrades.. digital doesn't.

digital just fails completely! ..
Click to expand...

Granted drives are prone to failure the solution is simple. Duplicate it on multiple drives, make extra backup copies on hd-dvd-bluray as it becomes cheaper.

"Lifespan The Blu-ray Disc format is designed to stay relevant for at least 10 to 15 years. "

http://www.blu-raydisc.com/general_information/Section-13576/Section-13577/Index.html#2

Say I cut down the lifespan in half.. in five years. blu-ray or hd dvd burnign speeds will be superfast..where making duplicates will be trivial. I really don't see the big deal about drive failure fears when for the price of 35mm film transfer.. you could buy a ton of drives and discs.

"A feature-length transfer to 35mm can be as low as $20000 (75 min)"
http://www.dvfilm.com/faq.htm

vs redcode- 300gb- over two hours on a 100.00 drive?....hmm.

I'll pass on 35mm film.
Click to expand...
 
Mark...
My statement is still correct. quote in it's entirety

"You tried to coax Tarantino, a film purist, into going digital. What was your argument? I told Quentin we could make a digital movie and have it look exactly like a film from the era. He said, "If you can do that, I'll be convinced." I took footage from Sin City and From Dusk Till Dawn, degraded it digitally, and mixed it with some music. I wanted it to look like a living graphic novel. I showed him the results, and he was blown away. He said, "All right. You win.""

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/robert.html

Quentin was "convinced" by Robert that he could produce the film effect to satifactory results. Quentin's choice to shoot film therefore, was not due to quality issue, but perhaps his comfort level with shooting film vs digital which may be foreign to him. This doesn't mean that Tarantino won't ever shoot digitally. If he is blown away by robert's tweak with Sin City and From dusk til Dawn, I wonder what he would think of Peter Jackson's red demo.
 
You know, it' s funny how things work out. Couple years ago I had just come off a 35mm feature film that won some great festival awards such as best cinematography and best narrative feature to name a few. The film garned pat's on the back and enough festival awards to sink a ship but really didn't "do" anything in the market place.
The film I worked on immediately after was shot digitally and didn't even make it into some of the same festivals as the prior movie. It won no awards whatsoever, but it got a "deal" and struck indie movie oil as far as distribution goes.

...Funny how things work out...
 
Alan...yeah, I kind of agree with you on the technology front.
It's only when technology gets pushed against a wall i.e. human requirement are over met that prices go down.
Take disk drives 10 years ago (or maybe it was my pocket!), they felt expensive, now they're common place and other factors can now be taken more into account i.e. raid for speed & redundancy.
As for higher resolutions, yes they creep slowly up.

But in these threads most of us love technology more than ma & pa in the lounge and most of us look out for picture quality more than them also. So what...it's our job!

I guess in the 'real world' other factors trump leading edge technology.

To put things in proper perspective my favourite image is this one:

48_1177029287.jpg


So go back 70 years and realise folks like us were having the same thoughts and arguments we're having, albeit in a television space on delivering quality etc, i.e Marconi vs Baird.

Still back to in 1936, but onto film, I think they began production on Gone with the Wind. We've enjoyed this on the big screen and in standard definition television formats.

What were the factors contributing to our enjoyment of this movie beside story, actors, settings.

I saw a list reputably from these people that said the most impostant aspects of picture quality 'IN ORDER' were:

1) contrast ratio
2) color saturation
3) color accuracy
4) resolution.

Have a problem with the order?....go back to 1936 and Gone with the Wind!

Cheers

Dave,
 
JCallahan said:
This covers preservation of the data very well, but it does not cover the ability of future hardware to read that data properly without having to actively and repeatedly migrate to new formats as they arrive.
Click to expand...

People overstate this issue. Yes, if you're using some obscure proprietary format, this might be a problem. But if you archive to standard, widely used formats, it's really a complete non-issue. The world is never going to forget how to read JPEG2000.
 
tonaci said:
Mark...
Quentin was "convinced" by Robert that he could produce the film effect to satifactory results. Quentin's choice to shoot film therefore, was not due to quality issue, but perhaps his comfort level with shooting film vs digital which may be foreign to him.
Click to expand...

Having seen "Death Proof" it didn't take me long to see why Tarantino shot 35mm, if only for the entirely practical issue of strapping a bunch of MOS cameras to a car performing stunts. No one would risk a Panavision Genesis camera in those conditions when a cheap 35mm Arri-2C would do the job better.

Plus Tarantino has a romantic attachment to film, just as he does to these old movies.

And I though the day exterior work in "Death Proof" looked pretty good anyway, so why did he need to shoot it digitally if he didn't have to and didn't want to?
 
Chris Kenny said:
People overstate this issue. Yes, if you're using some obscure proprietary format, this might be a problem. But if you archive to standard, widely used formats, it's really a complete non-issue. The world is never going to forget how to read JPEG2000.
Click to expand...

You say I overstate the issue, I say you are underestimating the rate at which technologies change. Think of how foreign it would be at this point to try and interface a modern computer with an Apple II or extract meaningful data from its 5.25" floppies. They were widely used. Zip disks were widely used. DAT tape was widely used. I am not going to forget how these formats were used, but I don't know how well that translates to actually being able to use them this many (few) years down the road. Think of how many fundamentally similar image formats came before JPEG2000 that are incompatible. Think of how many will likely come afterwards that are similar but incompatible.

Perhaps this will be less of an issue than I have made it out to be, and more of an issue than you have made it out to be. I suspect that without frequent migration there will be at the very least, a fair number of unforseen headaches.
 
JC,

The internet has changed all of this. If you want to revive an old format, download an emulator or the relevant drivers. Data =! Hardware.

For example, I am somewhat of a Super-Nintendo fan, but the physical hardware and and game cartridges are no longer available and are very hard to comeby. Soloution? I run a software emulator which runs the various ROM games that have been transcoded to software (from the hardware cartridges). If thats possible after 25 years, Im sure the hardware/format obsolesence issue is, well, a non issue.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
And I though the day exterior work in "Death Proof" looked pretty good anyway, so why did he need to shoot it digitally if he didn't have to and didn't want to?
Click to expand...

Exactly...if you like it, and you can afford to do it, why not?
 
acehole said:
JC,

The internet has changed all of this. If you want to revive an old format, download an emulator or the relevant drivers. Data =! Hardware.

For example, I am somewhat of a Super-Nintendo fan, but the physical hardware and and game cartridges are no longer available and are very hard to comeby. Soloution? I run a software emulator which runs the various ROM games that have been transcoded to software (from the hardware cartridges). If thats possible after 25 years, Im sure the hardware/format obsolesence issue is, well, a non issue.
Click to expand...

I still think that calling it a non-issue is a bit optimistic. It also depends on a lot of factors and technologies that don't exist yet. It's based on the the assumption that when a completely new platform/type of computing is commonplace, someone will write an emulator for old architectures and everything will just outright work, no fuss. Although it is definitely encouraging, I still say it's not enough to justify all eggs going into the digital basket. At least not yet, not with out some real concrete insurance.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
Having seen "Death Proof" it didn't take me long to see why Tarantino shot 35mm, if only for the entirely practical issue of strapping a bunch of MOS cameras to a car performing stunts. No one would risk a Panavision Genesis camera in those conditions when a cheap 35mm Arri-2C would do the job better.

Plus Tarantino has a romantic attachment to film, just as he does to these old movies.

And I though the day exterior work in "Death Proof" looked pretty good anyway, so why did he need to shoot it digitally if he didn't have to and didn't want to?
Click to expand...

First off. welcome to reduser David. I really appreciate your presence here.

Good point about the camera strapping. The Genesis would definitely not be very practical on a stunt vehicle.

If money is no object..yes.. shoot anything you want. Coming from a non film background, I have a different perspective on how things are done. My primary point in bringing up the grindhouse example was due to how Robert was able to convince Tarantino..that the look (which Quentin previously thought could ONLY be acheived by film) could be produced digitally to his satisfaction.

The film vs digital argument.. is getting less and less dependant on quality..but more for the "love of film, the attachment, the style of movemaking with film, the smell..etc".. okay.. I am understanding film purists better now.
 
tonaci said:
In terms of long life archiving.. film degrades.. digital doesn't. As for viable digital archiving alternatives.. there have been quite a few discussed here that provide 20-30 years life. LTO has been mentioned. I spoke with Deanan at NAB and he told me that he made like 5 backup copies onto five different drives. 500gb drives cost around 150 dollars nowadays.slim.
Click to expand...

2 copies from the original mag were made on set.
2 copies were made from the first copy at night in the hotel.
(one for Jarred and one to go to post).

The editor (rockstar Jabez) made a copy on the second day
and got a drive of the third day at the airport.

On the way back to LA we made two more copies (one for Jim
and one for myself) so we could start working on the plane
without touching the original master backups.

Oops. That's seven copies, not five. A bit excessive but it
was trivial to manage and do. Because the data rate is
quite sane, it enabled us to start working with the original
4k footage right away and without huge data management
headaches if we'd shot uncompressed 4k. 500GB vs 6TB

Deanan
 
The big change that I see in using film is economics. The studios and producers do care about the bottom dollar. If film continues to be much more expensive and the digital format is very close in quality of image, then many DP's will find themselves shooting digitally. I personally like the digital production workflow from beginning to end. It gives me a sense of freedom. But I am more director minded. What I hope happens is that Red and future high end digital cameras will bring the cost of film down.

Another thing to consider is the theatrical world. I was at Show West. Eventually all theaters will project digitally. When this happens the studios will like the idea of saving post production cost on digital distribution. The cost of distributing film prints is sometimes more then the productions budget. And the executives at the studio want more money for marketing. (Not like they don't have enough.) This especially applies for the indie films.

Film will be more difficult to justify if the digital cameras produce similar results unless the price of film drops.
 
Deanan said:
2 copies from the original mag were made on set.
2 copies were made from the first copy at night in the hotel.
(one for Jarred and one to go to post).

The editor (rockstar Jabez) made a copy on the second day
and got a drive of the third day at the airport.

On the way back to LA we made two more copies (one for Jim
and one for myself) so we could start working on the plane
without touching the original master backups.

Oops. That's seven copies, not five. A bit excessive but it
was trivial to manage and do. Because the data rate is
quite sane, it enabled us to start working with the original
4k footage right away and without huge data management
headaches if we'd shot uncompressed 4k. 500GB vs 6TB

Deanan
Click to expand...

thanks for the clarification Deanan.
 
JCallahan said:
You say I overstate the issue, I say you are underestimating the rate at which technologies change. Think of how foreign it would be at this point to try and interface a modern computer with an Apple II or extract meaningful data from its 5.25" floppies. They were widely used. Zip disks were widely used. DAT tape was widely used. I am not going to forget how these formats were used, but I don't know how well that translates to actually being able to use them this many (few) years down the road.
Click to expand...

Everything you mention above would be trivially easy to recover. Sure, you can't walk into a BestBuy and get a 5.25" floppy drive anymore... but there are places which specifically stockpile stuff like this, in order to offer data retrieval services.

And remember, sticking something on media and abandoning it for a few decades is not going to be the normal archival process. Increasingly, the archival process is going to consist of storing all material on actively maintained and upgraded storage clusters. Corporations that manage data this way already have information kicking around their systems that's decades old.

JCallahan said:
Think of how many fundamentally similar image formats came before JPEG2000 that are incompatible. Think of how many will likely come afterwards that are similar but incompatible.
Click to expand...

Sure, there are lots of obscure formats emerging and disappearing, but it's obvious when something rises above the fray, and turnover at the top isn't that high. The vast majority of images on the web are in either a 20 year old format (GIF) or a 13 year old format (JPEG). The desktop publishing world has been using TIFF continuously for a couple of decades. AIFF (19 years old) is still widely used for audio data. QuickTime can still play back pretty much any file created with the bundled codecs, even the original demos Apple distributed 16 years ago with 1.0. And the ASCII text format turned 40 this year.

Even when new formats do emerge, old ones typically don't go away, because there's often little or no expense involved in continuing to support them.
 
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